April

I should know better than to let Tessa McDaniels pretend to be my fiancée. I’m a dark, dangerous disaster who leaves destruction in his wake. But when she offers to pretend to marry me to help me get my kids back, I can’t refuse. They are the one thing I have left to fight for.

Guarding my lovely hostage has become my obsession. I protect Marisol from the vicious men in my brutal cartel, including myself. I've kept the promise I made to my boss on the night of her capture: No one touches her.

You’ve heard of these groups - the secretive ones that only the crème de la crème are invited into, the ones outsiders speculate about for centuries - I’m the second in my family invited to attend, but to them, I’m fresh meat. New blood. New money, too. They think they’ll elbow past me, that I’m here for their amusement, for them to walk all over, they’ll find out soon enough that I’m not.

You’ve heard of these groups–the secretive ones that only the crème de la crème are invited into, the ones outsiders speculate about for centuries–I’m the second in my family invited to attend, but to them, I’m fresh meat. New blood. New money, too. They think they’ll elbow past me, that I’m here for their amusement, for them to walk all over, they’ll find out soon enough that I’m not. I may look like one of them, with my designer bags and clothes straight from the Parisian runways, but I’m not.

I'm Ash Evans. The life of the party. Hot. Rich. Charismatic. A tattooed rock star with the world at my feet. I burn through women faster than the strike of a match. I've embraced my lifestyle and live it to the fullest. Until the day my lifestyle caught up to me. Willow Langston found me at my lowest. Literally. Facedown in a puddle of my own blood. I owe her my life and I have three months to repay that debt. What I never should have done was touch her. Kiss her. Take her to my bed. Love wasn't supposed to be a part of the equation.

It was easy to call us forbidden and harder to call us soul mates. Yet I believed we were both. Forbidden soul mates. When I arrived in Edgewood, Wisconsin, I didn't plan to find him. I didn't plan to stumble into Joe's bar and have Daniel's music stir up my emotions. I had no clue that his voice would make my hurts forget their own sorrow. I had no idea that my happiness would remember its own bliss.

I was warned about Tristan Cole. "Stay away from him," people said. "He's cruel." "He's cold." "He's damaged." It's easy to judge a man because of his past. To look at Tristan and see a monster. But I couldn't do that. I had to accept the wreckage that lived inside of him, because it also lived inside of me.

When 27-year-old pop sensation Brooklyn Heart steps in front of a microphone, her love songs enchant audiences worldwide. But when it comes to her own love life, the only spell she's under is a dry one. So when her label slots her for a Grammy performance with the sexy and soulful Jason Monroe, she can't help but entertain certain fantasies...those in which her G-string gets more play than her guitars'.

This is not a story of servitude. This is a story of strength. I was happy in my small town. In my life as a single, 32-year-old woman. I had a good job, wonderful friends, my independence. I also hadn't gotten laid in three years. Hadn't been on a date in two. Had stopped counting calories and wearing makeup...a while ago. Then Brett Jacobs waltzed in. Caressed my thigh, dug rough fingers into my hair, lowered his soft mouth to my skin, took sexual control of my mind, and stirred it all around with what he packed in his pants.